


366. fear

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [309]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:34:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: “They locked her in a bloody cage and I’m not letting that happen to her again!” Sarah says, and it isn’t until she’s done that she realizes she didn’t say it at all: she screamed it.





	366. fear

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [479\. carvings of gods](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10818516) by [piggy09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09). 



> Direct continuation of yesterday's drabble! Takes place in some mythical universe where Helena took Amelia's reveal better than she did and also the cops didn't show up, leaving Helena free to chill out in Siobhan's basement indefinitely. Look, don't question it. They're hugging, okay? You gotta let it happen.

Helena clings the way fear does, sharp and desperate. Her chin is digging into Sarah’s shoulder. Sarah wants to make so many promises she can’t keep. Sarah wants to say: _there’s going to be a home for you here, you’re never going to be hungry or alone._ It isn’t even Helena she wants to make those promises to. Helena doesn’t know that; Sarah is never going to tell her.

(The person Sarah wants to make those promises to is a little girl, twelve years old, carving her initials and her brother’s initials into a bed with a knife. There are times when you want to be permanent. There are times you get so scared of leaving someplace forever, and nobody knowing you were there.)

She hugs Helena back. The air smells like marker, sharp and sour, and Sarah doesn’t let Helena go. Hugging her is easy. It shouldn’t be; Helena should be jagged edges, Helena should slip through her arms like mercury and come up swinging. But no. Helena goes soft for her, and her arms are a tight comfort.

The basement door opens. One of them lets go, or maybe they both do, and Helena has her hand on the marker like she’s forgotten it isn’t a knife.

S is standing at the top of the steps. “What is this,” she says, her voice like a permanent marker.

“It’s fine,” Sarah says. “I got it.”

“I don’t think you have anything,” Siobhan says; she takes another step down, closer. Next to Sarah Helena is going tight-shocked, like a live wire. _God_ , Sarah thinks helplessly, _no, this isn’t like last time_ , but she looks at S and S transforms herself into the sort of creature that looms. Helena holding that marker like it’s a gun. Helena just waiting, Sarah can tell, waiting for a word and she’ll—

Sarah puts one hand on Helena’s shoulder, reaches out her other hand towards Siobhan. “Hey,” she says. “Hey hey hey.” She doesn’t know who she’s saying it to. Both of them. All of them. Under Sarah’s palm Helena thrums and she is electric. When Sarah takes her palm off she expects static; it doesn’t come, she isn’t disappointed by it. She hops off the washing machine.

“We can talk upstairs, alright?” she says to S, voice low, and she passes her and hops up the stairs. Behind her she can feel Siobhan and Helena looking at each other. Sarah can’t see Helena but she knows she’s doing something stupid, or threatening, like she doesn’t understand how thin her ice is. Like she just doesn’t _get_ it, how close she is to unlovable.

Sarah could charge back down the stairs. Sarah could grab Helena by the shoulders. Sarah could say _you think this whole world is out to get you but you’re punching them first, you idiot, what else are they supposed to do_. Helena wouldn’t understand that at all, though, so Sarah doesn’t. She storms into the kitchen instead and it isn’t until she’s slapping the bread on the plate that she realizes she’s making Helena a sandwich. God help the both of them.

Behind her S enters the kitchen. The weight of her, like a stormcloud. “She’s dangerous,” she says, like Sarah needs the reminder. “Do you really think she’s going to be content to sit there and draw on the walls—”

“She wants to stay,” Sarah says, yanking the fridge door open and grabbing the container of peanut butter like it’s done her a personal wrong.

“Really,” S says, scoffing a laugh. “And you actually _trust_ that.”

“You weren’t there,” Sarah mutters. Piece of silverware crash wildly against each other as Sarah grabs a knife out of the drawer and slams it shut. She scoops peanut butter out of the jar, drags the knife across the bread – but accidentally tears it straight through. Whatever. Helena won’t care.

“Sarah—”

“You weren’t _there_ ,” Sarah says again, and she slaps the knife down on the counter. “What, she faked it? Thought up a – a cunning plan to cry on my bloody shoulder and beg me to hold her bloody hand, huh S? That’s what’s happening here?”

“She is a trained killer—”

“They locked her in a bloody cage and I’m not letting that happen to her again!” Sarah says, and it isn’t until she’s done that she realizes she didn’t say it at all: she screamed it. The echo rings in the kitchen. Sarah presses the two pieces of bread together, sniffles air in through her nose, grabs the plate and heads back towards the basement.

“I’m gonna,” she says uselessly, and takes the stairs back down.

Helena isn’t on the washing machine anymore; she’s hovering near the stairs, and her face does a complicated twist of feelings when she sees Sarah come down to meet her. Then her eyes latch onto the sandwich and stay there. Sarah watches her swallow. Sarah offers her the plate. “Here,” she says.

Helena grabs the sandwich off the plate and shoves the whole thing in her mouth. She stands there awkwardly and works the bread around between her teeth, down her throat. It’s a horrorshow. Sarah sits on the bottom of the steps, puts the plate down, takes it in. She feels something tense in her chest unknot. The strain at the corners of her mouth say that she’s smiling.

The sandwich vanishes down Helena’s gullet and Helena beams back at her, sour and real. She drops her weight on the stairs next to Sarah. She fiddles with her fingers. “Is mother angry,” she says.

_Amelia_ , Sarah thinks, but no: Amelia went home, Amelia said _I’ll try again with her tomorrow_. Amelia, at least, is trying. Sarah is trying. Helena is trying. They’re all trying, and it still doesn’t feel like it’s going to work.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sarah says. When she looks down her fingers are picking at each other. Ha. Mirrors.

“I want to help,” Helena says.

Sarah sighs, short and curt. “Trust me,” she says, “best way for you to help is to stay out of it.”

“Oh,” Helena says. And then: “Yes.”

Shit. Sarah fucked up again. God, she thinks, and not for the first time: Kira is so lucky Sarah wasn’t there for most of her life. She grew up so beautiful without Sarah there to fuck everything up for her.

“I didn’t mean—” Sarah says, and stops. She reaches out into the space between them and wraps her hand around Helena’s hand, because that’s easier than fumbling for the words to say whatever the hell it is she’s feeling. Helena’s hand wraps around her hand like kudzu. She does not let go. There are calluses on Helena’s palm and they are from guns and Sarah loves her, she really does, it aches in her chest like someone else’s wound.

“I love you,” Helena says, like she can read Sarah’s mind.

“Yeah,” Sarah says, “I know.” She squeezes Helena’s hand. Helena squeezes back tight, vice grip, enough to crush her bones. Sarah likes it, maybe. It’s proof that Helena is still holding on to her.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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